from Hacker News

I am no longer attending vintage computer festivals

by ehPReth on 4/11/24, 6:18 PM with 68 comments

• by h2odragon on 4/11/24, 6:36 PM

  The politics of volunteer organizations tends to get uglier after there gets to be money in it.

  Preservation of things like this, ephemeral history, is important. Everybody recognizes that immediately: "hey what a good idea if someone would save that stuff". The actual doing gets harder.

  i got a stack of 17 years of "PC magazine" somewhere; easy to find people who say "oo cool i'd love to look through those" but much harder to find anyone willing to come pick them up.

• by cranky908canuck on 4/11/24, 10:44 PM

  With a large (at least in kilograms) collection of vinyl and shellac records, I have looked into the 'what happens next (ie., what should my executor do)' issue.

  The most memorable comment was in the blog of a buyer of collections. Can't find the link but paraphrased: "I will never even look at a collection that has had anyone else peruse and buy some discs. They bought your collection." As in, most 'collections' are really 'accumulations', the dealer will buy your accumulation and give you psychological cover that someone really values all of it, but keep the valuable stuff and bin the rest --- and first do an assay that there are indeed some gems in the ore.

  Also, "If you recognize the performers, it's not of any value".

  I see so many records at thrift shops that make me think "Crap, did I drop that off by mistake in my last move" that I have to concede that the fate of my collection will be the replacement of fossil fuels. As a classical listener and collector, I am nontheless moving to a (cynical?) assessment that a lot of those collections are "the music you were told you should enjoy".

  Yep, it's heartbreaking. This thread makes me think about what the real goal should be, given that the material media is merely fuel. Maybe a short document about the things that I want to charge the beneficiaries with giving a listen to?

• by noobermin on 4/11/24, 6:23 PM

  Note that Vintage Computer Festivals refers to a specific festival held by the Vintage Computer Foundation (VCF). Jason isn't saying he will never go to any festival ever again.

• by Lerc on 4/11/24, 8:01 PM

  I care about vintage computers and early computing history, because quite a few people I know are aware of this I am gifted old hardware and documentation. I have nowhere to set them up or display them so they go into storage.

  I would willingly gift them to good homes, I feel my role is as a custodian. I cannot make use of these things, but I can ensure that they continue to exist.

  I can completely sympathise with the anger that the author of this post feels. They were performing this custodial role and the expectation in passing to a new custodian is that they preserve the material or pass on to a new custodian. I'm sure if faced with the option of destruction or taking back the donation the author would have taken it back.

• by amichlin on 4/11/24, 10:03 PM

  As a former warehouse volunteer at VCF in Wall, NJ, I can attest that this blog post consists of only conjecture and no facts.

  Everything was checked for archiving. Everything was offered to anyone who would listen for over a year. Most of the paper found a good home. In fact, a better home as the warehouse is near the ocean and has no climate control. Not a good place to donate paper. It should never have been donated and should never have been accepted (under previous management).

  I was actually there. Nothing in this blog post is factual.

• by nxobject on 4/11/24, 9:31 PM

  A sad lesson on the ethics and goals of vintage collecting: are you responsible for stewarding everything you have, to your best ability, for the next generation? I'm sure we all think the answer is yes – but when putting that in practice, as in this case, it's easy to (self-interestedly) not think of all of the consequences. The same applies to turning old Macs into aquariums, etc.

• by strict9 on 4/11/24, 8:20 PM

  >However, I was told, they had decided to keep the plastic boxes, and were making use of them.

  This is more of an insult than a consolation. I'm still in disbelief that they were tossed out rather than offered back or donated elsewhere.

• by amatecha on 4/11/24, 7:09 PM

  Just a reminder that VCF's mission statement is literally "To preserve computing history through education, outreach, conservation, and restoration"[0]. It's pretty egregious that they would destroy such a large collection of material directly relevant to computing history.

  [0] https://vcfed.org/about/

• by D13Fd on 4/11/24, 6:31 PM

  That’s really a shame. He’s lucky they were at least honest enough to give a straight answer, I suppose.

• by navjack27 on 4/11/24, 6:41 PM

  All that history, gone. Screw em

• by WhitneyLand on 4/11/24, 6:41 PM

  It sounds like Jason invested a lot of time and care in making a donation of a large collection of possibly historic periodicals. He disagreed with the way the donation was handled, they apparently tossed them without much consideration and kept his plastic bins. So, he’s decided no longer to attend festivals.

  Was the issue about disrespect, the loss of the periodicals, mismanagement, or a combination? It doesn’t say.

• by prosaic-hacker on 4/11/24, 8:13 PM

  I have a storage room under the stairs which would be a vintage computer museum of its own. I am keeping it there until I downsize the house in the next 5 years. I have been delusionally waiting for that 10,000 year preservation origanization to come into existence but I am not holding my breath.

  If a billionaire funded museum could run into trouble (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34831880) what hope is there for anything else.

  PS. I have a cache of ~10,000 1980s and 90s DIP ICs (8032 Micro controllers and support chips) that I want to find a use for. You could contact me at my account name without the punctuation at gmail.

• by 2four2 on 4/11/24, 6:23 PM

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• by stronglikedan on 4/11/24, 6:30 PM

  I hope they at least recycled them.

• by jazzyjackson on 4/11/24, 6:55 PM

  Sounds like the donation was unsolicited, Jason just expected the thousand pounds of tree pulp to be appreciated by a vintage computer festival?